Media Performance Quotes

I do come alive in front of a camera. The first video I ever made was a formative moment for me.

The media is really failing the American people.

Standing up here 10 in a row, you know, like a bunch of seals waiting for somebody to throw you the next fish, is not necessarily the best way to impart your information to the American people. I'm not above acting like a seal every once in a while and waiting for the next fish, I just don't want to do it all the time.

The great sadness of my life is that I never achieved the hour newscast, which would not have been twice as good as the half-hour newscast, but many times as good.

If you can be who you are on camera, which is not easy, then I think you're going to be successful.

You get into this situation, performing for T.V., where you have to speak with utter sincerity. It's just like the radio. You have to say it like you mean it, even though the thing you're saying is actually planned out.

It's a tribute to the human brain that anyone is able to function out there on television in a talk situation that is entirely artificial.

I rarely come away from presenting the 'Today' programme without some sense of regret. There is always some question that I should have asked, or some point that I should have made. This is annoying but not surprising. Perfection is hard to achieve in a three-hour live programme.

If you're on TV regularly, doing a thing regularly, whether you're Anthony Anderson on 'Black-ish' or Don Lemon, an hour a night, you have to turn into, 'What's the delivery system through which I can deliver information?' I don't mean they are being fake or that they are doing something that's disingenuous.

I think that we shouldn't be fixated all the time on the ups and downs of the weekly ratings, of the quarter-hour ratings.

Being a broadcaster, man, you just sort of paint from a blank canvas, in a way.

You'd think if anyone could charm America into caring about the evening news, it would be Katie Couric, the Tri Delt from Virginia who became America's sweetheart on the 'Today' show. But her ratings have been dismal - she comes in last place every week.

Andy Gray is a great pundit and a great co-commentator. I couldn't co-commentate for love nor money. I've tried but I just can't do it, so as an all-rounder I'd say Andy's much better than I am.

Only those who've presented live television really know how difficult it is to make it look easy.

When I'm doing TV, it's more of a choreographed dance, in a way. So I've got to follow the pictures, or the pictures have to follow me.

You have to give an element of performance on television.

We got ratings. It isn't that they won't quarrel with you, or say you're always right. But as long as you stay strong and the ratings are good and you're reasonable - I don't think we fought unreasonably. We basically won that right.

Being on TV in front of people is a lot different than sitting in a dark room with a microphone. When I had my radio show, I was on four hours a day for 20-something years. If you put a live microphone in front of Mother Teresa for that amount of time, she'd piss somebody off.

When you're on camera, you can't think of all the technical things.

The fact is that surveys which media people openly admit to show that fewer than twelve percent of their customers believe they're doing a good job, while the average profit margin in television is in the neighborhood of eighty percent.

I don't get nervous when I'm interviewing someone on film - it can be cut, and we can do it again. It is quite nerve-racking doing things live.

People like Bryant Gumbel and Bob Costas are terrific broadcasters because they get challenged every day.

I think I could be good on TV.

It's not as if I can just pop on my show and be rude if I've had a hard day.

Once you recognize that all documentaries are performance, it's not a matter of 'if' they should be performance. They are performance, and they are performance precisely where people are playing themselves.